The Trend Is Republican?

Reported in a German newspaper? Openly? No sinister conspiracy theories? No ifs, ands or buts? I’ve seen it all now.

President Obama is under pressure: Surveys indicate that he is losing one state after another to Romney. He doesn’t have many chances left to turn the trend around.

Romney hat den Trend auf seiner Seite.

Merkozy This Is Not

How about Hollmerk?

The two capitals (Berlin and Paris) always begin from very different positions, whether there is a socialist or conservative administration in Paris.

The concern in Berlin is over what is seen as the absence of a clear strategy on eurozone reform from the new French government. There is a deep suspicion that France is happy to have a weaker euro, higher inflation, and a looser monetary policy than Germany.

Mr Hollande’s refusal to incorporate the recent “fiscal compact” into the French constitution is one reason that Germany is now pushing for every country to sign a bilateral budget “contract” with the European Commission, that can be enforced by a powerful budget commissar… But Paris regards Ms Merkel as being overly focused on building deeper European political integration in a way that ignores deep-seated reticence in France reflected in the 2005 referendum defeat of the then-planned EU constitution. 

Draw This

How can you (Germany) have a 4-0 lead in the 60th minute (in Berlin) and then end up with a 4-4 draw against Sweden at the end of the match (a World Cup qualifier)?

Beats the hell out of me. But nobody else here seems to know what happened, either. I guess this was just one of those thrill-of-victory-and-agony-of-defeat moments or something. Only it was a tie. Which makes it, I dunno, worse?

Looking on, their manager, Joachim Löw, was in a “state of shock,” unable to comprehend how his players had managed to throw away a 4-0 lead on home soil to a Sweden side that days earlier had scrambled to victory over Faroe Islands. Germany had drawn but it felt like a defeat.

Get A Job 101

You couldn’t make this stuff up if you had to, people. Not that anybody cares about Germany’s Pirate Party anymore, but I do have to admit that these guys still keep coming up with real zingers.

The latest coup: The party’s general manager in Berlin, Johannes Ponader, up until now a proud and long-term welfare recipient, is now celebrating his closing with this stage of his life (for now, anyway) by openly calling for public donations to help him finance his hard-pressed, well, livelihood (or lack of it).

Strangely, this actually seems to have upset some of the other pirates out there (they seem a bit touchy these days for some reason) who think that maybe this might cause some kind of a Glaubwürdigkeitsdilemma (credibility dilemma) or something. As if.

Like I said, not that anybody cares anymore or anything.

“Hier entsteht der Eindruck, dass jemand politische Ideen mit persönlichen Vorteilen verknüpft.” 

BEA-EADS-RIP

Massive political resistance or pure economic theory? Or both?

“From an economic perspective, this should of course be avoided. Pure economic theory would say that the state should stay out of it and leave the market alone.”

“The massive political resistance was ultimately too great to overcome.”

Electric Cars Have Already Reached A Whopping 0.01 Percent Of All Registered Cars In Germany

That’s some, uh, 4,600 vehicles. At this rate, the German government’s plan to have 1 million electric cars on the road by 2020 will be reached easily.

Or maybe not. Because those pesky German consumers still haven’t got the message and think that these babies are too expensive and don’t have a long enough range to make them attractive as, you know, as cars.

So that’s why the German government, flexible as it is, has now said that their goal of 1 million electric cars by 2020 (set last year) has now become a goal of 600,000 electric cars by 2020. I can’t wait to see what next year’s goal for 2020 will be like.

Damn. I’m impressed. This German Energiewende (energy turnaround) is getting easier and easier to reach all the time.

“If we don’t create incentives, then the whole thing is going to fail,” the Green party said in a statement.

Germans Concerned That Obama Maybe Could Might Not Be Reelected Doch Nicht (After All) Perhaps

Germans everywhere are all aflutter these days at the prospect of their United States President maybe not being automatically reelected after all, like which ought to be selbstverständlich (understood) or something but isn’t irgendwie (somehow).

German political scientists have namely just discovered that the unemployment rate in the US of Obama is well over 8 percent (and has been during the entire Obama administration), poverty levels are way up (3.6 million more Americans live off state support than before he entered office), the rate of founding new companies is at a thirty year low, government spending and debt have risen to incredible levels and the economy will simply not kick into gear, with no recovery or White House plan to change any of this in sight (and with no George W. Bush in sight to blame anymore, either).

Otherwise though, Obama is still the perfect guy for the job. So alles wird gut (everything will fall into place), they HOPE (way cool slogan from somebody a few years back).

Gouverneur Martin O’Malley geriet in Verlegenheit. Ob es den Menschen besser gehe als vor vier Jahren, wollte ein Reporter von dem demokratischen Gouverneur Marylands wissen. “Nein”, hatte O’Malley geantwortet.

Grass Caught Smoking Grass Again

After basking in the glory of his warmly received and highly acclaimed anti-Israeli poem in April, Germany’s Nobel Prize-winning author Günter Grass just can’t seem to help himself and has published yet another poetic work criticizing Israeli policy.

In his latest magnum opus, he praises, among other things, “A Hero in Our Time,” Mordechai Vanunu, who served 18 years in prison for espionage after betraying his country’s nuclear secrets to the Sunday Times of London.

By absoulte sheer amazing coincidence, Grass just released this work in a new book of poems yesterday appropriately entitled “Eintagsfliegen” (One-Hit Wonders) and in no way intended or intends to bring any unwarranted attention to himself and/or said book which can now be purchased online or at a bookstore near you.

And please remember: This is not, never has been nor never will be  anti-Semitic abuse. Enlightened Germans (and all Germans are) don’t do that kind of stuff (anymore). This is freakin’ German Nobel Prize-winning author Gunter Grass we’re talking about here, people. For crying out loud.

In 2006, Grass admitted in an interview that he had joined the Waffen-SS as a teenager at the end of World War II, and was accused at the time of having hidden the truth for decades while at the same time pointing the finger at others for hiding their Nazi past.